HARVARD COPYRIGHT, 1899 PRESS OF CARL H. HEINTZEMANN, BOSTON, MASS, U. S. A. INTRODUCTION ALPHONSE MARIE LOUIS DE PRAT DE LAMARTINE, a poet, historian, diplomatist, and statesman, was born at Mâcon, October 21, 1790, and died at Paris, March 21, 1869. He belonged to an ancient and noble family of Burgundy. His father had served under the monarchy as a major in a cavalry regiment; as for his mother, Lamartine, in his Confidences, has portrayed her as being gifted with every womanly virtue, and his very touching panegyric has been confirmed by general report. Everywhere, in his writings, are to be found. evidences of her influence on his mind and on the peculiar bent of his ideas. "My education," he says, "lay wholly in the varying calm of her eye, in her smile more or less cheerful. I could read in her eyes; what she loved, I loved; all my sensations and thoughts were but a reflection of her own." In 1820 he published his Méditations Poétiques, which met with the greatest success as being the creation of a new style of poetry, the French lyric poetry of the age. A short time after, Lamartine was appointed to a diplomatic post at Naples, where he married a wealthy English lady. Then came Les Nouvelles Méditations (1823), followed by Le Chant du Sacre (1825); Les Harmonies Poétiques et iii |